"I thought you were missing, but you adopted me"...Parents sued in state for first daughter in 44 years

Han Tae-soon complains of unfairness who searched for her missing daughter's adoption without knowing. / Yonhap News

In 1975, parents who had been searching for 44 years without knowing that their missing daughter was adopted overseas filed a lawsuit against the state for damages.

The Children's Rights Alliance and legal representatives held a press conference near the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho-gu, Seoul on the 7th and explained why they filed a lawsuit against the state for damages, saying, "We want to raise the issue of the history of pushing for overseas adoption faster than efforts to find parents for missing children and the state's responsibility to protect such children."

Four family members, including the missing daughter's parents, filed a total of 600 million won in compensation against the state, the infant home and the adoption agency that were protecting the child at the time. This is the first case in which a missing child was adopted abroad without finding his or her parents, and this is the first time a lawsuit has been filed to hold the state accountable.

According to the delegation, the parents searched for their missing daughter for decades after losing her 6-year-old daughter in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, in 1975.

However, the daughter was handed over to an adoption agency two months after she disappeared, and overseas adoption was promoted. Afterwards, the daughter, who was 6 years old at the time of her disappearance, was found to have left for the United States after seven months.

Parents met their daughter through a group called "325 Kamra," which supports finding families through DNA information. And I learned this process through the adoption records that my daughter had.

At that time, the parents reported that the child had been lost, and the child was found to be a lost child and was found to have been at a local police station. However, the agency claims that the government did not make enough efforts to find Mia's parents to meet the demand for overseas adoption at the time.

The daughter's mother, Han, said, "I feel so sorry for the time lost due to pain," adding, "The missing families are sick and wasted their property in search of their children, and live a tragic life, but no one is responsible for it."

Reporter Park Sun-young of Digital News Team